The Springbok Tour - 35 Years On
Tuesday 19 July marks the 35th anniversary of the Springboks' arrival in New Zealand for the 1981 rugby tour. Collected below are classic documentaries on the tour and subsequent mass protests (Patu!, Try Revolution), anti-tour protest songs, and a doco on the All Blacks’ first post-apartheid tou...
NZ On Air Top 20
NZ On Air began funding local content in 1989. Timing in with the launch of a new funding system, this collection looks back at the 20 most watched NZ On Air-funded programmes over the years (aside from news and sports). Ratings information is only available from 1995, so this is how things have shaped up from 1995 to 2016 — plus some bonus titles. Most of the Top 20 has been captioned. Ex NZ On Air exec Kathryn Quirk tells us here how the complete list rated, while original NZOA boss Ruth Harley remembers how it all began.
Close Up - Big Dealers (featuring John Key)
This episode of current affairs show Close Up offers a fascinating portrait of the early days of New Zealand's foreign exchange market. Reporter Ted Sheehan heads into "the pit" (trading room), and chronicles the working life of a senior forex dealer, 25-year-old accountancy graduate John Key. The "smiling assassin" (and future Prime Minister) is a calm and earnest presence amongst the young cowboys playing for fortunes and Porsches, months before the 1987 sharemarket crash. As Sheehan says, "they're like addicts who eat, breathe and sleep foreign exchange dealing".
Close Up
80s show Close Up had a similar brief to earlier current affairs show Compass: to present mini-documentaries on topical local issues. Stories in the primetime hour-long slot were wide-ranging, from hard news to human interest pieces, including a profile of 25-year-old foreign exchange dealer, future-Prime Minister, John Key. The show won Feltex Awards for most of the years that it was on air. Close Up is not related to the post-nightly news show of the same name, which was hosted by Mark Sainsbury until 2012.
Peter Hayden
Peter Hayden’s long storytelling career spans fact, fiction, feather and fur. Hayden has worked extensively behind the scenes on a run of nature documentaries, made for company NHNZ. His acting career includes roles in classic goldmining drama Illustrious Energy and Maurice Gee series The Fire-Raiser. In 2017 Hayden was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to film and television.
Don Reynolds
Tangata Whenua, A State of Siege, Utu, Smash Palace, The Quiet Earth, Illustrious Energy ... The resume of soundman-turned-producer Don Reynolds covers the modern renaissance of New Zealand film. After starting his own sound companies, Reynolds has gone on to production roles in NZ, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Murray Milne
Cameraman Murray Milne often finds himself working on jobs that involve swimming or hanging from helicopters. After starting on commercials, Milne worked with director Richard Riddiford, filming 80s road movie romance Arriving Tuesday, and Zilch! Following acclaimed shorts with Costa Botes, Milne did impressive work for Peter Jackson on Meet the Feebles and zombie epic Braindead. Since then Milne's work has mixed TV with aerial and underwater photography.
Rawiri Paratene
Actor, writer and director Rawiri Paratene, ONZM, first sprang into the public eye on the iconic Play School and comedy shows like Joe and Koro. In 1999 he played gangmember Mulla Rota in the sequel to Once Were Warriors, and four years later was seen around the globe as the stubborn grandfather in Whale Rider. In 2010 he won further acclaim after starring in movie The Insatiable Moon.
Dick Weir
The distinctive deep voice of veteran broadcaster Dick Weir, QSM, is known to generations of Kiwi kids as a longtime Radio New Zealand National presenter (The Dick Weir Sunday Show, Ears). On screen he has narrated everything from election campaigns to Erebus docudramas to Wild South. Weir was also the inaugural presenter of 80s after-school news programme The Video Dispatch.
Maxine Fleming
Maxine Fleming created or co-created the Emmy-nominated Being Eve, Agent Anna (starring Robyn Malcolm) and black comedy Burying Brian. The former journalist began her scriptwriting career when soap Shortland Street launched in the early 90s. Fleming has gone on to write for Outrageous Fortune, small town drama Mercy Peak, and Cliff Curtis mini-series The Chosen.